Tourism Latin America

Programmes of the CBI contribute to the sustainable economic development in developing countries through the expansion of exports from these countries. Within the Latin America Team tourism has been identified as a sector with great potential to contribute to the above mentioned mission. Worldwide the tourism sector provides around 6 to 7% ofthe jobs and millions more indirectly via the multiplier effect in other sectors. Especially for developing countries tourism is important, representing 45% of the total export often/ices. The geographical expansion and labour intensive nature of the tourism sector provide a spread ofernployment which is particularly relevant in remote and rural areas Where many ofthe poor live. Furthermore, receiving (western) tourists poses the need for improvement of the physical and legal infrastructure and of the general service standards. The above also goes for the targeted two sub-regions for this programme, the Central American and the Andean. Tourism already is an important money earner. However, the potential, both in quantity as in quality (richer tourists and sustainability) has not been exploited fully. Both sub-regions are in a process ofpolitical and economic integration. This especially holds for the tourism sector, Where integration takes place on institutional level, but also in the actual tourism products, aiming at integrated tourism circuits (eg. the Volcanoes-trail in Central-America), which offers possibilities for joint promotion in international tourism markets.In the mentioned sub-regions several donor initiatives are active and some larger ones are starting-up in 2011. Of these especially the (start-up) tourism programmes of IDB for Bolivia and of the Spanish Development Co-operation Effort for the Andean Community offer possibilities ofsynergy, co-operation and (to be investigated) funding. In 2009 CBI started an ECP tourism in both sub-regions, sewing a total 24 companies in Bolivia and Colombia, and a total of io in Guatemala and Nicaragua, the 4 non-exit countries on the current CBI country list. Besides these, 33 more companies are served in the 3 other exit-countries in these regions (Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador). Integrating these efforts into a programme combining CBIs and other donors services will have a positive effect on the overall outcome.